My mutterings on life, thoughts and actions.

Traffic enforcement camera

One of the big issues I have been dealing with is the speeding round Kingsway. because the roads are so small and windy, and because there are so many children on the estate, it is really important that drivers moderate their speed to the roads as although 30mph is the enforceable speed, even that is too fast. I have already done an initial speed review, have instigated the wheelie bin sticker campaign and the next step is the community speedwatch. This kicked off a couple of days ago with Special Constable Dave Howe, myself and Sarah Jones doing a training session in Kingsway and the next few weeks will see us out at locations across the estate and at varying times to monitor drivers speed.

Getting to grips with my new “sidearm” (Image by Amanda Greenway)

For me, this group has 3 targets, firstly to get a measure of the average speed around the village that the police can use as a basis of intelligence for their future operations, secondly to encourage residents to engage as a community to provide a visual deterrent for speeding and thirdly to show drivers that speed cameras are in force in the village. In things like this,im a great believer in prevention is better than cure and anything we can do to increase road safety before more people are injured or worse, then I’m happy.

While we will be doing this in bursts of a few weeks as other groups need to use the equipment, we will be doing this repeatedly through the year. Hopefully we will see the average speeds decrease over time and the community will become much safer.

It also links in really nicely with one of my key election pledges, to get Kingsway to be a 20mph zone (Twenty’s Plenty), but this requires the roads to be adopted first.